Envy’s announcement surfaced on their official Twitter account on Wednesday in a post that also highlighted the organization’s plans to make additional roster changes.
FugLy arrived at Team Envy on March 22, 2019, alongside Sam “s0m” Oh and Bradley “ANDROID” Fodor as a part of roster rebuild that saw both Tayler “Drone” Johnson and Stephen “reltuC” Cutler part ways with the team. Unfortunately, even with the new additions, Envy failed to produce any memorable results in the four offline events they attended in the remaining months of 2019.
Envy finished 13th-16th at ESL Pro League S9 – Americas, finished last at both IEM Chicago 2019 and DreamHack Masters Malmo 2019, and ninth-10th at ESL Pro League S10 – Americas in mid-November.
The underwhelming results steered Envy to make more roster changes which led to the departure of team’s manager Taylor “Tailored” Broomall and coach Zachary “Eley” Stauffer, while s0m left the team at the start of December to join Gen.G and their new-look CS:GO roster. The roster changes continued into 2020, with the benching of both ANDROID at the start of the month and now FugLy.
Shortly after the announcement of FugLy’s removal from the roster, the 25-year-old CS:GO pro made a lengthy Twitter post where he talked about his experience playing for Envy. The p[ost addressed a number of topics, including the issues that arose due to a lack of communication with the organization and the team’s IGL, Noah “Nifty” Francis.
As claimed by FugLy, everything started in August, two months after Envy acquired AWPer Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek from ATK. At that time, Envy were struggling with results, which led to the players creating a WhatsApp group to discuss the future of the team. There, the majority of the players agreed Nifty should be removed from the team. According to FugLy, Nifty found out about the conversation and the following day removed Sonic from the team without discussing the move with the rest of the squad first.
Throughout the four months that followed, FugLy reportedly had a tough time establishing a stable communication with his IGL and the organization’s leadership, which put his future with the team in jeopardy. What’s more, Nifty supposedly did not talk with the team members when making key decisions, which was the case with the removal of Sonic and with the benching of ANDROID in December.
FugLy talked about how he was contacted by Nifty to discuss which players he would like to see in the team going forward. FugLy indicated that he believed Envy should keep Ryan “ryann” Welsh, while he was unsure about ANDROID, which is why he urged Nifty to ask ryann to get his opinion. That, however, did not happen.
According to FugLy: “December 23rd comes along (not the weekend, by the way, but Monday) and I get a message from ANDROID that he has been cut. Weird…I message ryann and ask if he knew about this because I told Nifty to talk to ryann first. Nope. He just found about it as he got cut.”
Furthermore, FugLy was supposedly assured he would remain with the team throughout 2020 but was shocked to hear the announcement of his benching earlier on Monday.
“So all in all, I was jebaited for over a month, lied to, left on the backburner and after all that, it ends like this,” FugLy said.
“Sucks but it is what it is, I felt I was still very naive even after the whole Sonic situation where everyone on the team knew it was f***** and it was not a team but one person making every decision for himself and no one else mattered, which the org is OK with.
“They want him running the show as Nifty and Envy are very close.”
FugLy went into more detail in his Twitter post, where he explained everything, including his issues with moving to Dallas in order to join Envy at their house.
The Envy roster currently consists of only two members in ryann and Nifty. Both ANDROID and FugLy are still under contract, yet both are benched and will not play with the team. No official announcement about new arrivals has been made, besides the rumors surrounding former ex-Space Soldiers member Bu?ra “Calyx” Ark?n and former BIG coach Nikola “LEGIJA” Nini?.
The upcoming CS:GO esports tournament is set to kick off on October 1 at the MalmoMassan Arena and conclude on Sunday, October 6 with the grand finals at Malmo Arena.
It will serve as the third Intel Grand Slam event of the season, following IEM Chicago, which concluded on July 21, 2019, and ESL One: New York, which will kick off next week on Thursday, September 26.
While there are still almost two weeks that separate us from the opening fixtures of the tournament, DreamHack revealed the finalized team list on their official website this week after Team Envy emerged as the champions of NA qualifiers.
The 16 teams heading to Sweden next month are Astralis, ENCE, Team Envy, Fnatic, FURIA, G2 Esports, Grayhound Gaming, Team Liquid, mousesports, Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, North, NRG Esports, OpTic Gaming, TYLOO and Team Vitality.
Envy’s road to Malmo started in the North American closed qualifiers, where they were one of the two teams (alongside eUnited) that received direct invites.
The remaining six teams had to earn their spot via open qualifiers that featured 66 teams from all over North America competing for one of the four available tickets.
Closed qualifiers took off on Wednesday, September 11, featuring eight sides: Team Envy, eUnited, Stay Frosty, ATK, Shark Esports, Swole Patrol, Monstars and Team Divine.
The format of the closed qualifiers featured double-elimination bracket playoffs with all matches played in best-of-three (Bo3) series.
The grand finals, however, used a best-of-five (Bo5) format, with an additional rule that gave a one-map advantage to the team that earned their spot in the finals via the upper bracket.
Team Envy started their NA qualifiers campaign with a fixture against Team Divine, who were no match for 2015 Major champions. In that match, Envy showed no mercy and crushed the newcomers in two swift rounds 16-10 and 16-8, to secure a spot in the semi-finals of the upper bracket.
There Envy faced off with Swole Patrol, who earned their spot in the semis after their quarter-finals opponents, Stay Frost, forfeited the match due to scheduling issues.
Despite being gifted a spot in the semi-finals, Swole Patrol put up a solid fight in map one (16-14), only to suffer a humiliating defeat on Inferno (2-16) and a close 14-16 defeat on Train.
By defeating Swole Patrol, Envy entered the upper bracket finals, where they met with eUnited.
eUnited as one of the two favourites to win the qualifiers did not fail to put up a tough fight, which pushed Team Envy to their limits on both Inferno and Nuke.
Unfortunately for eUnited, however, Envy managed to push through and edged past them with two closely fought wins, 19-15 on Inferno and 14-15 on Nuke, to secure a spot in the grand finals.
In the grand finals, Team Envy re-joined with eUnited, who had no issues crushing Sharks Esports in the lower bracket finals (2-0) and were now looking for revenge.
While filled with the desire to avenge their defeat four days prior, eUnited failed to derail Envy for the second time in a row.
Envy kicked off the grand finals with a 16-10 win on Nuke, lost to eUnited 14-16 on Inferno and closed out the grand finals with a dominant 16-9 win on Mirage.
With that, Envy became one of the 16 teams that will travel to Malmo at the start of October, to compete for the largest slice of $250,000 prize pool and a point which will count towards their IGS S3 rankings.
The Season 5 final is taking place between June 8 and 10 when a team is getting crowned. This year, the pools prize increased, instead of $150,000 the champion is receiving $250,000. This is the highest prize in the Rocket League history, and it was possible thanks to the current popularity of esports..
So far, 8 teams are locked in for the World Championship:
North America
Europe
The representatives from Oceania are not decided yet with Chiefs eSports Club, Legacy Esports, Dark Sided, and Tainted Minds all still fighting for the final two spots.
Gale Force Esports entered the Season 5 World Championship as defending champions. The team took the Season 4 title in Amsterdam and are looking to repeat their achievement this year.
Details about the tickets will be announced soon on the League��s official Twitter. Fans can enjoy the matches live at the Copper Box Arena or online on the Twitch platform. The Rocket League surprises those that make the trip to the arenas and this year is not the exception. Fans can expect unique items as a reward for their attendance.
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